Golf: NZ Open prizemoney loses its million-dollar glow

By MARTIN DAVIDSON

The New Zealand Open championship at Auckland's Middlemore course in January has a new naming rights sponsor but the players are likely to be competing for much less money than this year.

That much was clear after a confusing release of this summer's schedule from Australasian PGA Tour officials in Sydney yesterday.

PGA Tour chief executive Andrew Georgiou confirmed that Holden was replacing Telstra and Hyundai as sponsor for an event which carries a minimum guaranteed purse of $700,000, a big drop on the $1 million prizemoney offered this year at Paraparaumu.

Georgiou did not discount next year's purse being raised to match this year's prizemoney, which was doubled from last year almost purely because of the presence of world No 1 Tiger Woods.



New Zealand Golf Association chief executive Peter Dale described this year's Open featuring Woods as an aberration.



"The prizemoney, ticket pricing and reported multimillion-dollar losses have no comparison with our New Zealand Open," he said.

But the short-term objective was to reach the $1 million mark.

Woods' appearance in this year's tournament saw NZGA and its traditional event partners, IMG, cede control of the tournament to merchant bankers FR Partners.

Neither NZGA nor IMG was willing to take the financial risk of paying Woods an estimated fee of $5 million to play in New Zealand.

Instead, Open2002 Ltd was set up to pay Woods' fee, which it tried to recoup with high-priced tickets. The cost of a season ticket for the tournament went from $50 to $450.

Open2002 Ltd is thought to have lost up to $4 million on the event.

NZGA operations manager Phil Aickin said charges for next year's tournament would return to "close to" those set last year.

He did not share Georgiou's confidence the purse could go to $1 million.

"There is still some time and there's a lot to weigh up but it's a bit hard to comment on that one. If you forget about the Tiger Woods event, which was one out of the blue, this [$700,000] is a nice increase."

The original schedule had the New Zealand Open being played on January 23-26 at Middlemore and it took a series of calls before confirmation the event is taking place on January 16-19.

NZGA always understood the latter dates had been set aside for the Open.

Georgiou said confusion over the dates stemmed from a "miscommunication" between the NZGA and his office.

The tour schedule also includes the $1.2 million Clearwater Classic in Christchurch from March 13-16.

The event, co-sanctioned by the Australasian and US PGA tours, was played for the first time this year, largely with players from Australasia and Americans playing on the Buy.com second-tier tour in the US.

- NZPA